Sweet new farm-bill plan from Democrats: Let’s pressure the GOP by using an archaic law to double milk prices!

posted at 4:01 pm on September 13, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

We’re still waiting on the House’s version of food-stamps legislation after they split the traditional coupling of food stamps and agriculture policy into one gigantic “farm bill” earlier this summer (I’ll refer you to my Congressional-drama preview post from last week for a more complete summary of the situation), and their current plan to cut an utterly draconian $40 billion/10 years from the now almost $80 billion/year food-stamps program (read: 5 percent cut) is already drawing the highly predictable and demagogic ire from progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers.

Republicans biggest obstacle to reform, as ever, is that once their food-stamp and agriculture-policy bills go into the conference with the Senate, Senate Democrats will immediately want to pare back GOP’s suggested SNAP cuts closer to their proffered $400 million/year (a.k.a., half of one percent) — as the GOP is well aware:

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas says more “outside the box” thinking will be needed to save a farm bill this fall and he is prepared to support “bigger ideas” to get the task done.

“I may have to do a lot of things outside the box to get this final thing together, I will acknowledge that to you,” Lucas told POLITICO of upcoming talks with the Senate. “This is going to be a hard, complicated conference.”

“I’m not opposed to bigger ideas. I just want to get it done,” he said. “And right now you know how difficult it will be to make something happen from the status quo in the two bills.”

“The challenges that will confront the House and Senate, when we both get there, are so great. The positions are locked in so tight on so many issues. That to achieve a consensus that we can pass on both floors, that we get the president to sign, we may have to think outside the box.”

Hmm. As it happens, Democrats also have some “outside the box” strategizing in mind — including getting the Agriculture Department to revive a 1949 law that requires them to manipulate the dairy market so that milk is priced at a floor of roughly $39 per 100 pounds, effectively doubling today’s prices:

The top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee has launched a new strategy for passing a farm bill this year: threaten to send milk prices skyrocketing.

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) said he called Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack this week suggesting that the agency begin the process of implementing the 1949-era dairy policies that would take effect Oct. 1 if Congress fails to act on a farm bill before then.

“Clearly this is not going to get done by the 1st of October, so my suggestion to the secretary is that they should start now putting the framework together to implement the permanent law on dairy Jan. 1,” Peterson said Wednesday in the Capitol. “And it sounds to me like they’re going to take a very serious look at that.”

The point here isn’t really to raise milk prices, but to spur the relevant lobbies into overtime doing what they do best — applying all kinds of completely self-interested pressure to lawmakers of all stripes in order to keep all that special treatment coming, no matter the effects on the overall economy or the federal deficit.

“The first thing that happens of any consequence is Jan. 1 on dairy. So if he [Vilsack] starts the process [Oct. 1], then we can be ready to have $39 milk Jan. 1,” he said. “And then I think, within two or three weeks, we’ll probably have a farm bill.

Unfortunately, the interested lobbies have proven themselves to be stupendously well-organized and well-monied when their corporate welfare is on the line, and the U.S. dairy market is a hot mess of market-distorting regulations and subsidies. That “dairy cliff” I mentioned at the end of last year on the tail of the fiscal cliff? Same drill.

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You sir, have the correct GOP message should the democrats be so foolish as to actually follw through and send the price of milk skyrocketing.
Just make sure that the public takeaway is is that DEMOCRATS are manipulating prices to double the price of milk ON PURPOSE.

We don’t need milk anymore. Michele Obama discovered water. Its everywhere and it is FREE!

ctmom on September 13, 2013 at 4:21 PM

Ya but she doesn’t realize that our entire water system is contaminated with that deadly chemical dihydrogen monoxide, which kills millions of people every year and causes billions of dollars in damage….

I’m failing to see what the downside is here. Can’t we just campaign the crap out of “Democrats war on milk & kids”? Can’t we introduce a repeal of that old law: Republicans crusade to save milk & kids?

Yep. If they wanted to take this decision to its (il)logical conclusion it is unconstitutional to provide anything through the sweat of your brow that interferes with interstate trade. No gardens, no dairy animals, no animals for food.

Force it to go there. No one will buy it, and then the market will take effect.

uberjim on September 13, 2013 at 7:04 PM

Just what I was going to say. They upped the taxes on smokes, people quit or like myself, went to alternatives, and they lost tax revenue. Double the price of milk (I can’t stand the stuff anyway, but I do use sour cream and cheese), and I’ll just buy a lot less dairy and make do with soy substitutes.

Democrats have got to be the most economy ignorant people in the world. I’m thinking even some ignorant savage in some remote third world country isn’t even as soundly stupid.

Farmers, or as I like to call them farmsters, are some of the most envious and covetous folks in the world. Y’all wanna know how socialism–and even communism–gets a foothold in a society of free men? Farmsters. They love to enslave their fellow man, which is why farmsters and Democrats fit together so well.